Redmountain Hills Rift

[Nibelung]

Just to think, if in 4 months the Azure City Rift grow so much (from the size of a single gem to a evil looking big rift at long range), maybe the Redmountain Hill's Rift already eat the village with the Freya Temple.

Nah, maybe im just thinking a lot.

[RyuTakarashi]

Since the rifts are rather vertical than horizontal I seriously doubt wheter this would be a problem. Also during this four months the rift wouldn't expand few (dozens) kilometres. I say it is 20 meter tops larger.

[Nibelung]

Yes, the original few-inches rift now is a 60-feets rift. Put the same grow in the 30-feets rift on Redmountain hills, and we get a very big rift.

[SteveMB]

Presumably, the Redmountain Hills rift is at the bottom of a big pile of debris. It might not have breached the surface yet (though a few earth tremors might have broken out).

[Draz74]

Just to think, if in 4 months the Azure City Rift grow so much (from the size of a single gem to a evil looking big rift at long range), maybe the Redmountain Hill's Rift already eat the village with the Freya Temple.

Nah, maybe im just thinking a lot.

I assumed the Azure City rift might be growing faster than normal because Xykon is playing with it. I don't know why he would be, since he seems to be attached to the idea of playing with a rift that specifically has a Gate. But ... scary idea, no? :xykon:

[Ganurath]

Am I the only one who's concerned about the Gate that Lirian had been protecting? You know, the one that got caught in a fire and destroyed as allusions scattered in the comic indicate?

[David Argall]

The other two rifts have likely not expanded at all.

Each rift is an independent event, not altered by what happens to the others. [Tear several holes in a sheet of paper. Now tear one a lot larger than before. The others do not grow.]

The previous two gates were apparently limited controled explosions that did not break the seal on the rift. So the seal keeps the rift at the old size. The Azure City Gate broke with an uncontroled explosion, which also broke the seal, and supplied the energy to widen the rift.

[Kreistor]

Sorry, David... 246.2.3

"In time they developed a design for a mystic gate that would buttress reality around each rift that would keep it from tearing further. As long as the gates stood firm, the rifts would never grow."

The seals keep the Snarl back. The gates keep the rifts from growing. So the other rifts are in fact not being held back by anything anymore. If the seals survived the destruction of their gates (hardly a certainty, especially with the rifts growing), then the Snarl is not loose on the world at least.

[Fighteer]

Since our viewpoint hasn't returned to those rifts, it's hard to say for sure what their current state is. However, the apparent lack of urgency on the part of Shojo (not to mention the gods themselves) to repair the gates tells me that one of the following things must be true:

a) The threat of the Snarl breaking free is not particularly imminent, especially since two of the five gates are still intact.

b) There is no convenient way to rebuild the gates, especially before Xykon himself is stopped.

c) The plot hasn't advanced far enough yet for The End Of The World As We Know It (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt) to loom overhead (complete with dark clouds, lightning in the heavens, rumbling from the earth, and Ominous Latin Chanting (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OminousLatinChanting)).

[Mewtarthio]

Yeah, I agree, Shojo seems pretty laid back about all this. Though maybe he's just burying everything. He has seemed kinda dead as of late. :smalltongue:

[Querzis]

Yeah, I agree, Shojo seems pretty laid back about all this. Though maybe he's just burying everything. He has seemed kinda dead as of late. :smalltongue:

Sure he seems pretty laid back about the destruction of the world but he was also pretty laid back about his own death.

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0407.html

«It appears not everyone agrees with your analysis» with a smile? It look like Shojo was pretty laid back about everything.

[Fighteer]

I meant when he was alive, of course. While he certainly seemed to take his responsibilities to protect the integrity of the fabric of reality fairly seriously, I suppose it's possible that his lack of absolute panic about the Gates' destruction was the fact that he knew he probably wouldn't live long enough to have to deal with it personally.

Still, you'd think that if things really came down to the point where the Snarl was likely to get released, the gods would notice and do something, even if that turned out to be nothing more than running around in a panic.

[SoD spoiler warning] Remember that the The Dark One's plan of last resort, if he can't use the Snarl to blackmail the other gods, is to force them to destroy the world and remake it, lest it get loose and kill them all.

[David Argall]

"In time they developed a design for a mystic gate that would buttress reality around each rift that would keep it from tearing further. As long as the gates stood firm, the rifts would never grow."

The seals keep the Snarl back. The gates keep the rifts from growing. So the other rifts are in fact not being held back by anything anymore. If the seals survived the destruction of their gates (hardly a certainty, especially with the rifts growing), then the Snarl is not loose on the world at least.

Now we are taking the word of a non-expert Shojo [also known to lie like a dog if he thought the cause good] talking about the work of experts here. So we can't be that sure of anything. Still...
The word seal does not fit if the seals merely imprison the Snarl. The meaning of seal here would be to close or shut, often very completely and tightly. When we seal the rift, we close it, with the merely incidental effect of keeping the Snarl on the other side.
When you seal something, the presumption is that also stops the thing from growing. However the sealant is normally weaker than the original and will crack in time from whatever strain caused the original problem. So we would view a seal as normally a temporary measure. Eventually it would fail. One way would be that surrounding material deteriorates. So we have the gate to prevent that. However, the seal also prevents the rift from growing. It merely can only do a temporary job.

Now we can add here that it has been 26? years since Lirian's Gate was destroyed. It was already more than man sized. And we know the paladins visited it after the destruction. [It's location is uncertain, but if we assume it is somewhere near V's elven homelands, it is very far away and it would have taken the paladin a long time to get there.] It apparently had not managed to grow by the time they had arrived, and any rate of growing since has to be extremely limited. A mere annual doubling would have already ripped the world in half.

Looking at this from the story angle, we also find no reason to think the other rifts are growing. We really have only 1 story of stopping the rift from growing, which is going to be Azure city. Going back to stop the other two is boring. So these rifts are not growing at any serious rate.

[Alex Warlorn]

As someone else suggested, the rifts may not be tears, but infections.

[beelzebob]

David,

Too much of your argument is based on unwarranted assumptions.

There hasn't been any clear indication just how far away from Azure City Lirian's Gate is, or how long it took the paladins to reach it. Couldn't they have, perhaps, been teleported there by Shojo's mage? And even if it did take them weeks (or even months) to get there, it would have been their first time seeing it. They have no frame of reference to judge its size on; for all they know, it could have shrunk.

Personally, I'd say that a "mere annual doubling" is an oxymoron; doubling in size every year is huge. Of course, this is just a personal opinion. There's also absolutely no reason to assume it would double in size every year at all. Where'd you get that number?

Kreistor's assertion that the gates keep the rifts from growing (with actual evidence to support it!) is correct. The other gates ARE growing, though at an indeterminate speed. I will admit, though, that the language of the phrasing he quotes does not actually say outright that the gates of one rift have anything to do with the rate at which the other gates grow.

I have to point out a flaw in your "hole in the paper" analogy. First of all, unlike your piece of paper, there is a force actively seeking to break free in the OOTS. Second... "limited controlled explosions"? What has been said in the comic to support this? And you have to keep in mind that the gates, and the Snarl's prison itself, follows a different set of rules than our own world. It's not physics.

[beelzebob]

David,

Too much of your argument is based on unwarranted assumptions.

There hasn't been any clear indication just how far away from Azure City Lirian's Gate is, or how long it took the paladins to reach it. Couldn't they have, perhaps, been teleported there by Shojo's mage? And even if it did take them weeks (or even months) to get there, it would have been their first time seeing it. They have no frame of reference to judge its size on; for all they know, it could have shrunk.

Personally, I'd say that a "mere annual doubling" is an oxymoron; doubling in size every year is huge. Of course, this is just a personal opinion. There's also absolutely no reason to assume it would double in size every year at all. Where'd you get that number?

Kreistor's assertion that the gates keep the rifts from growing (with actual evidence to support it!) is correct. The other gates ARE growing, though at an indeterminate speed. I will admit, though, that the language of the phrasing he quotes does not actually say outright that the gates of one rift have anything to do with the rate at which the other gates grow.

I have to point out a flaw in your "hole in the paper" analogy. First of all, unlike your piece of paper, there is a force actively seeking to break free in the OOTS. Second... "limited controlled explosions"? What has been said in the comic to support this? And you have to keep in mind that the gates, and the Snarl's prison itself, follows a different set of rules than our own world. It's not physics.

[beelzebob]

David,

Too much of your argument is based on unwarranted assumptions.

There hasn't been any clear indication just how far away from Azure City Lirian's Gate is, or how long it took the paladins to reach it. Couldn't they have, perhaps, been teleported there by Shojo's mage? And even if it did take them weeks (or even months) to get there, it would have been their first time seeing it. They have no frame of reference to judge its size on; for all they know, it could have shrunk.

Personally, I'd say that a "mere annual doubling" is an oxymoron; doubling in size every year is huge. Of course, this is just a personal opinion. There's also absolutely no reason to assume it would double in size every year at all. Where'd you get that number?

Kreistor's assertion that the gates keep the rifts from growing (with actual evidence to support it!) is correct. The other gates ARE growing, though at an indeterminate speed. I will admit, though, that the language of the phrasing he quotes does not actually say outright that the gates of one rift have anything to do with the rate at which the other gates grow.

I have to point out a flaw in your "hole in the paper" analogy. First of all, unlike your piece of paper, there is a force actively seeking to break free in the OOTS. Second... "limited controlled explosions"? What has been said in the comic to support this? And you have to keep in mind that the gates, and the Snarl's prison itself, follows a different set of rules than our own world. It's not physics.

[David Argall]

Your answer gets a bit repetitive.


There hasn't been any clear indication just how far away from Azure City Lirian's Gate is, or how long it took the paladins to reach it.
We do know it was in elven lands, and V gives us a distance to it that is quite large. We do not have a direction, but even the least direction is over 3000 miles from Azure City. Of course V was not likely to have given the minimum distance, and we don't know the location in elven lands. Still, it would seem a very large distance.


Couldn't they have, perhaps, been teleported there by Shojo's mage?
Possible. Indeed, the idea makes a good deal of sense. But we know only a small party could be transported that way. So if they made any serious investigation, it wouldn't be sufficient.



it would have been their first time seeing it. They have no frame of reference to judge its size on; for all they know, it could have shrunk.
They personally would not have seen it before, but they had heard from Soon, who had seen them all. They did know at least the relative sizes of the things, and it would not be at all surprising if Soon gave them precise sizes when he was training his troops.


Personally, I'd say that a "mere annual doubling" is an oxymoron; doubling in size every year is huge.
Assuming the image is the rift, it has increased in size about 200 times that fast. However, I was trying to show the other rifts have probably not grown at all.



There's also absolutely no reason to assume it would double in size every year at all. Where'd you get that number?
It is a convenient figure for math. And a much smaller figure would tell us we don't need to worry about these other rifts anyway. The story will be long finished before they become a serious worry.


Kreistor's assertion that the gates keep the rifts from growing (with actual evidence to support it!) is correct. The other gates ARE growing, though at an indeterminate speed.
The indeterminate speed here includes zero. The text in question says there is a possibility the rifts will grow [unless a gate is present], not that they were growing at any time, either before they were sealed or after.


I will admit, though, that the language of the phrasing he quotes does not actually say outright that the gates of one rift have anything to do with the rate at which the other gates grow.
It does not even imply it. And most models we would make would predict no interaction, or that the growth at any one rift would slow growth at the others.

The base model would be a stretched cloth. There is increased strain at each tear. But each tear is not connected with the others. When one tear expands, it makes much greater strain on itself, but little or none of that strain reaches the other tears.
Another model would be a baloon with 5 leaks. As one leak expands, it releases more gas and the pressure decreases, which reduces the pressure on the other leaks.
The idea of an increased strain is probably based on the idea of 5 ropes holding the Snarl, in which case one breaking would put more pressure on the rest. But we do not have 5 ropes on the same thing. Rather we have 5 ropes on 5 things, in this case, 5 doors the Snarl can escape by. The breaking of one rope does not change the strain on the others, except possibly to make them worthless if the Snarl escapes by the unroped door.


I have to point out a flaw in your "hole in the paper" analogy. First of all, unlike your piece of paper, there is a force actively seeking to break free in the OOTS.
This makes no difference to the models.


Second... "limited controlled explosions"? What has been said in the comic to support this?
Our castle Gate was destroyed by an explosion caused by our epic mage. He didn't want his gate used for evil purposes. But he didn't want the Snarl escaping either, and he could easily see that might happen if the explosion was too violent. So we can assume he made the button explosion sufficient to destroy the gate, but not sufficient to harm the seal on the rift.
Lirian's gate also would seem to have been designed with safe destruction in mind. In any case, we do not see the massive explosion we had with the others.


And you have to keep in mind that the gates, and the Snarl's prison itself, follows a different set of rules than our own world. It's not physics.
But it is physics, except where the laws of science get in the way of the story. Things still fall, except where we impose magic.

[TDG]

There's a rather large problem with your "controlled explosion" theory - both gates we have seen explode in the comic have done so in the same manner.

In #119 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0119.html), we see the self destruct rune's explosion. Its a (relatively) small explosion, yes. However, that explosion destroyed the gate, leading to the "CCCCCRRRRAAAACCCCKKKKOOOOMMMM!" explosion in #120 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0120.html). The larger explosion in 120 isn't a small, controlled explosion, but is the gate exploding practically identically to that in #461 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0463.html).

As for the question as to whether or not the rifts affect eachother, we don't know. Sure, paper may not demonstrate the properties some people believe, but we've talking about the threads of reality that contain a god-killing beast of pure chaos. I don't really think we can say with 100% certainty that the example is relevant. It may end up that none of the rifts grow by themselves, but Xykon has been playing with the rift recently. It may well be that the end of the world is nigh and the Snarl will escape from one of the other rifts whilst the comic focuses on the OotS elsewhere. It may well be that the rifts being reopened does affect the other rifts. We just don't know, and won't until some further info is placed before us.

[RMS Oceanic]

"In time they developed a design for a mystic gate that would buttress reality around each rift that would keep it from tearing further. As long as the gates stood firm, the rifts would never grow."

This would be true if there wasn't a scene before this with Soon yelling at them to "Cast the spell! Seal the Rift!". I think they initially came up with something to close the rifts, and then devised the more permanent solution later on. It's possible their first spell could be easily "punched through", as it were, and maybe it's still holding on the other two rifts through chance.

[hamishspence]

The other rifts have not grown at all? Evidence please.

Lirien's Gate Rift: OPEN. Why? Because Redcloak and Xykon and the Evil Roaches strongly say so. "Sensing a disturbance in the space-time continuum" Redcloak says he has increased the chance of destroying all creation. That suggests the rift is open.

RedMountain Hills. Almost certainly open. Self destruct rune, enormous bang, accusation of weakening the fabric of the universe, that required a family member as jury to get the person off. All corroborates deduction that Rift is open. No "Gate destroyed but rift sealed" would fit. Even if rifts can be sealed temporarily, the Gate is the imp[ortant bit.

Do rifts grow? Azure Rift certainly has. This might be the work of Xykon and Redcloak, causing it to expand by being present and evil. Though it does seem a bit of a stretch. More likely all the rifts are slowly growing.

Hypothetically, the smallest is the most dangerous: Assuming a fabric, a hole, and equal forces exerted on each hole, smallest would grow fastest due to smaller area being worked on. While real world physics may not apply, it does give a reason for fast growth.

Are Xykon and Redcloak hanging around? If so, this may be because they are very nearly high enough in level to build a Gate, rather than spend time seeking one. If so, breaking the gate was a Very Big Mistake if it lead to a open rift to be worked on, without disposing of villains nearly powerful enough to work on it.

[SteveMB]

I assumed the Azure City rift might be growing faster than normal because Xykon is playing with it. I don't know why he would be, since he seems to be attached to the idea of playing with a rift that specifically has a Gate.

Maybe he got bored.... :smalleek: